Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy AdventureReview

Typically when a new release tackles a classic genre, I end up attaching phrases like “a modern take on…” or “an updated version of…” to the description. Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure requires no such preface. It wholeheartedly embraces its ‘90s adventure-gaming roots, proudly doubling down on the design choices and aesthetic motifs that turned the series into a cult favorite before it entered an extended hiatus back in 1998. Most notably, Tesla Effect relies heavily on live-action video. While I could never bring myself to fully embrace that (crucial as it might be to the franchise), Tesla Effect manages to be both funny and flawed independent of its dated delivery.

Exit Theatre Mode

Despite its grimy depiction of post-World War III San Francisco and cyberpunk-meets-film noir flavor, Tesla Effect is, at its core, a comedy -- and a campy comedy at that, one rife with silly puns, cartoony gags, and knee-slapping one-liners. In a phrase: dad jokes. At one point, Tex picks up a “past due” notice and a voice exclaims “You’re late, ya bum!” before a fist pops out and punches him in the face. While not every joke hit quite so hard (zing), you get the idea. The cultural references occasionally came out stale (The Brady Bunch? Lead paint?), but the humor in general is so disarmingly goofy and light-hearted I couldn’t help but be charmed. It felt like being tickled by a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode I’d somehow missed.

Tesla Effect’s production values possess a modicum of that same campy charm, but it wears thin much more quickly. The transparently low-budget costumes and props seem almost deliberately cheesy but ultimately left me feeling like I was watching some weird amateur YouTube series. The wildly inconsistent acting didn’t help either. While some characters -- including Tex himself -- were portrayed with commendable confidence and strong comedic timing, others like the meek electronics store employee sounded like they’d been shoved in front of a camera entirely against their will. Bad acting is one thing, but watching a decent actor carry on a conversation with a wooden plank is uncomfortable on another level.

To make a bad situation worse, the dialogue didn’t always work. I occasionally heard lines that didn’t logically follow the statement that preceded them. Other times, characters mentioned new information without actually acknowledging that something new had just been unceremoniously revealed. It could be pretty jarring. It’s possible some of this friction stemmed from the branching dialogue options, which leads me to some other complaints.

Unlike other games with similar mechanics, Tesla Effect doesn’t allow players to preview the lines they’re selecting. Rather, dialogue options are given vague titles like “Shock and Ohhhhh” and “Brightside.” It usually felt like I was choosing blindly and that, therefore, my input was meaningless, which turned out to be true when I replayed conversations multiple times. I can only recall three instances where I actually faced a potentially story-altering decision. The whole setup really made me appreciate the elegance and subtlety of similar mechanics in games like The Walking Dead.

Tex returns!

And then there’s the story itself, which suffers from a serious crisis of editing. The plot is unbelievably convoluted, so much so that it’s actually difficult to describe. Basically, sarcastic, self-deprecating detective Tex Murphy wakes up in his office and can’t remember the previous seven years of his life (ugh), which means he must figure out what happened that night, who stole his memory, and how it relates to his missing girlfriend and to Nicola Tesla and to reincarnation and...yeah.

The narrative mostly makes sense by the end, but it gets off to a slow start and lurches in several different directions before finally finding its groove. Even then, there are several subplots and characters that eventually turn out to be red herrings or loose ends -- forgotten or abandoned somewhere along the way. Tex himself proves to be a remarkably likeable underdog though, and I was invested in the outcome by the time I finally neared the end of the 20 hour campaign.

Zing!

The actual gameplay provided another bright spot -- although, like the plot, it took a while to get going. The opening few chapters relied almost entirely on exploring the open central hub (several blocks of a San Francisco slum), and interviewing the same handful of people over and over to gather more and more information. Then suddenly, the fifth chapter whisked me away to a snowy castle for a marathon gauntlet of “activity book” puzzles: sliding tiles into place, pushing buttons in the correct sequence, solving mazes -- all standard, forgettable mini-games entirely divorced from the rest of the gameplay.

Of all the coffee joints in all the world...

That dramatic shift from gumshoeing to puzzle-solving exposes a disappointing lack of balance in Tesla Effect’s design, but after the castle, the experience finally leveled out and started to recapture the layered complexity I always loved in ‘90s adventure games. Rather than leaning so heavily on simplistic standalone puzzles, I would have to actually explore the 3D game space and find (or create) ways to progress through the level by, say, collecting and combining the correct items to fix a busted machine that would allow me to unlock a secret door that led me to the next crucial item...and so on. Being able to piece together the next step using my own skills of deduction remains just as rewarding as it was two decades ago.

The Verdict

Just as its noir-inspired detective Tex Murphy is a “man out of time,” Tesla Effect is indeed a game out of time. Every aspect -- from the humor to the puzzles to the live action cutscenes -- feels beamed here straight from the ‘90s. Sometimes it’s charming, and others, it’s just dated. But if nothing else, Tex’s puns and underdog relatability ultimately still make this rocky, uneven case worth cracking.